Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Coffee: Bugs and Debugging

It can actually energize your gut bugs. Nestlé researchers showed that for sixteen healthy adult volunteers consuming a daily dose of 3 cups of coffee during 3 weeks. This led to an increase of the metabolic activity and/or numbers of Bifidobacterium species, important probiotics in the food industry. Bifidobacteria has been long suggested to be therapeutic for the relief of intestinal disorders, including Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). These microbes can crowd out the bad bacteria and fight inflammation. Does it mean coffee can alleviate IBS?

Unfortunately, no one was ever able to cure IBS with coffee. And diets lowering the amounts of bifidobacteria (like low FODMAP diet) are actually most beneficial for conditions associated with bacterial imbalance. Even though Bifidobacterium infantis 35624 was shown to help women at a dosage of 1x108 CFU for 4 weeks (but not 106 or 108 CFU!) with abdominal pain, bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation and other IBS symptoms. And B. lactis DN-173 010 helped healthy women to reduce transit time when 1010 CFU of these bacteria was taken for 10 days.

Too much of a good thing can be a problem and it's important to keep even "good" bacteria at bay. How much is too much coffee for IBS sufferers? It depends. And it varies from being able to only smell coffee (which might be enough to protect from stress and cavities) to drinking two cups per day.

Everything is relative. That's why Aurametrix computes tolerance profiles based on many different factors - time of the consumption relative to wake up and bed times, diet an hour, week and month prior to consumption, medications and supplements, activity, gender, medical history, stress levels, the weather and genetics.

General recommendation for healthy people is to limit their coffee intake to about 4 or 3 cups - for men and women respectively. To prevent insomnia, digestive issues, a racing heart, high blood pressure, nervousness, irritability, nausea, risk of developing glaucoma and other short & long term problems. And it's best to drink coffee in the first half of the day - as caffeine's half life is 5 hours or more, longer with unhealthy diet and medical conditions (it could be up to 7 days for people with alcoholic hepatic disease!). The worse your coffee metabolism is, the less you should drink it. Genetically-slow caffeine metabolizers (individuals homozygous for the CYP1A2*1A allele in their genes) should actually limit coffee to 1 cup or less, to reduce the risk of myocardial infarction. Rapid caffeine metabolizers with CYP1A2*1F genotype, on the other hand, could reduce their heart failure risk by moderate consumption of coffee. Coffee could help mice avoid skin cancer - but only if they are also vigorously exercising. It can prevent reoccurence of breast cancer - if you already had it and are taking tamoxifen. With the right genes, bacteria, diet, activities and the brain gut axis, moderate amounts of coffee can also decrease risks of type 2 diabetes, depression, workplace apathy, cognitive decline, gout attacks, respiratory disease, infections, stroke, injuries and accidents.

But these are statistical averages. And you are not average. You are unique and paradoxical in your own wonderful way. Aurametrix was created to help you understand that.

I'm also not entirely sure what to think about the relationship between bifidobacteria and IBS - supplements with either pro or prebiotics are clearly beneficial (eg, http://caloriesproper.com/?p=1273), but so are diets which reduce endogenous bifidobacteria.